I called her right after I got out of the meeting. I should have called her two weeks ago, but this is a game I play with myself over and over. Before I got to the meeting, I was a jangle of nerves spilling the coffee on my pants and just a few minutes later, the water tumbled over too.

Why do I always have to carry along liquids everywhere I go? Especially liquids that I know do not fit into the cup holders in the car.

Most likely, the same reason that I forget to take medications and make stupid mistakes that I regret two seconds after making them. I told him tonight as I was getting ready for the meeting that all of these “ailments” I am having are directly related to my center not being centered.

Basically, the things that “get to me” are things that are not going to change. It is up to me to accept these things for what they are.

Still, I manage to find ways to pay penance for my being a mere human that fucks up.

Speaking with her on the phone, she suggested that I try and keep the focus on myself. I shoot back pretty quickly, “but I think that is why I’m loony now”. I fear I’ve been focusing on myself entirely too much. She’s quiet and patient with me. She sees no reason to argue this point, knowing that I will come around when I am ready to come around.

Towards the end of the call she tells me that I sound much better than I did at the beginning of the call.

Her voice is always so calm, so loving, and her words have a way of pulling me back into reality. She asks me, “what have you done for yourself lately?”

I think to myself, “I don’t deserve to do anything nice for me”. I make mistakes, I say stupid things. She isn’t buying it. She’s not taking the “please beat me” bait. She never takes that bait.

I want so much for someone to just tell me how incredibly stupid and thoughtless I am. I tell her that if she won’t do it, I’ll call someone who can. This is meant as a joke, but reminds me of all the times I wanted to be punished for making a mistake and I had folks I could call that were more than happy to tear me down. And I did it all on auto-pilot.

That doesn’t work anymore. It hasn’t worked for a very long time, but old habits die hard. The knee-jerk reaction is to seek it out.

It finally dawns on me what I’ve been doing. Creating situations to disrupt my life in such a manner to make me “pay” for my bad behavior. I can know this all day long, and you can even remind me of it but it won’t guarantee my immunity from it.

There is a permanent path in my brain for a few things. When things get crazy, run. When feelings start to rise up, run. If anything uncomfortable, or not nice comes up I am supposed to run.

Now that the cat is out of the bag, so to speak I can’t run anymore. It’s like my running legs have been sawed off at the knees. My mind wants to, but my body cannot comply.

I was able to accept what she was giving me, even though it boils down to the truth of me not being able to run. I growled at her for doing such a thing to me. She didn’t do it at all, she was just the voice of reason during a mental breakdown. It is why I have asked her to help me along this journey.

I usually refer to this part of the process as “stop, drop, and roll”.

Reaching our for help pertains to the stop. Releasing what is no longer serving me is the drop. Lastly, the roll part is giving myself a break and moving on. Hopefully that moving on part won’t be as hard as I have a tendency to think it is.